Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Apothesion of the Ocean X


The Ancient Fiction

 

An apology against a selective reading of history that aggrandizes particular nations over others.

 

You fools that pick an choose from song

of Clio, once spoken and spoken once again

for likes of you! Why doth thy lie and ancient

fiction perpetuate of thine worth? One would

think that the cluster crowned by Britain did

hold sway over world, and thine fitful skirmish

did write and determine destiny across the seas!

 

But even Britain, so proud and spread over

quarter of the earth and sea, did not last more

than four generations, to be given without

fight to its first rebellious child. The kingdom

of Genghis Khan laid rule firmer over swaths

of solid earth than the outposts that meant

to India subdue and with it ocean-sea.

 

Oxford and Harvard stand as first temple

and refuge of learning in thine mythology,

and men before did not think or wonder.

But Maecenas was early thirteen centuries

to raise and patron Virgil to Roman glory,

and August governed an Empire more united

than that which scare, unwilling founded

these tiny croppings in the array of world.

Be taught instead and know that royal saint

discerned and donated pious gift of Jagiellonian

learning that shares the ancient heritage with

papal academies and the libraries of Baghdad

whose wisdom preserved of Greeks did dye

Euphrates for half moon beneath Mongol pillage.

 

Truth faithful to the muse doth dispel the

darkness of the plebs, that lays as heavy chain

of humiliation on heroic peoples forgotten,

links of pride on those inflated by hubris.

My pen purchases the freedom won already,

recalls geniuses from oblivion, and raises

to equal rank and brilliance all the peoples

the Lord has summoned and knit by sea.

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